Two bizarre rumors circulate in the new Champions League

Sports Weekly All Media Original

The first year of the Champions League introduced the "Swiss System" and received positive reviews overall. This is a big strange thing this season. It is very likely that people's good impressions come from the huge freshness of the new competition system, and the unheard of 36 teams' standings are indeed strange. But in just two or three years, when the freshness disappears, people will gradually find that this "league stage" is designed to be very failed, which is more boring than the previous group stage. Under the inexplicable "stimulation"

There are two major illusions in the league stage: first, there are more strong dialogues; second, the game is really exciting, and Manchester City and Paris have spent the last round to qualify!

Be good, if there are wealthy families who qualify for the buzzer, is this exciting? Perhaps people's memories are getting shorter and shorter, so let's connect to the Internet to recall: Last season, in the last group stage, two giants, Manchester United and AC Milan, failed to break into the group; last season, Barcelona, ​​Juventus, Atletico Madrid did not qualify; up and up and up and up, Barcelona, ​​Milan Dortmund; up and up and up, Manchester United, Inter Milan.

See? The group stage that was previously criticized as meaningless, but in fact, it lost two or three wealthy families a year, with a large amount of thriller content. This season, under the loose competition system of 36 teams qualifying for 24 teams, the giants collectively advanced, and many of them were promoted. As long as a wealthy family does not suffer a great loss, it is really difficult to fall out of 24.

Some people say that the 24 teams are treated differently after all, and they go directly to the top 16, and they have to endure the playoffs 9-24. In the end, Manchester City, Juventus and Milan three giants stopped in the playoffs, which is exciting! The life or death playoffs do have the natural excitement of the knockout round, but the question is, what does this have to do with the league stage that lasts for more than four months? During the league stage, have you seen any team and fans really not sleeping or eating because they never accept falling out of the top 8?

In fact, except for a team like Milan who lost the right game in the last round, which would be disgusting, Zhu Qiang really didn't regard the playoffs as much. This is due to people's laziness. If you have a way out, you don't have to worry. Going directly to the top 16 is to qualify, and the playoffs is also to qualify. Therefore, when Real Madrid fell to 24th place in 5 rounds, the public opinion discussed more about business issues - why it is difficult for Mbappe to integrate, whether the locker room has lost control - and did not really worry about life and death, because everyone easily accepted the playoffs.

Just imagine, if it were under the old competition system, Real Madrid lost 3 of the first five games and was about to die in the group, what kind of explosion would Real Madrid go from senior management to fans to media?

Think about it again this year, Liverpool is the top spot in the league stage, but he qualifies for Paris and was eliminated early. Paris staggers to qualify for the championship but eventually wins the championship. Each team will only see the direction more clearly: the results in the league stage are really not that important.

The new competition system is not only generous and kind, but also has a great room for fault tolerance, but also significantly reduces the chance and drama of the lottery. Except for Paris, the bad luck in the signing season, the eight opponents of other giants are roughly evenly strong. In the past, there were death groups, such as Barcelona, ​​Bayern and Inter Milan, and Liverpool, Milan, Atletico Madrid, who were destined to die after the draw, and once the game started, they would compete for an inch of land. Even for the "two strong and two weak" group, the fault tolerance rate is usually lower than the new competition system. In recent years, Barcelona, ​​Inter Milan and Manchester United have tried one or two games and performed poorly. Have you forgotten all these real stimulations?

The strong dialogue that does not rise but falls, as for the new competition system, the increase in strong dialogue is a rumor that is easier to falsify. In this season's league stage, there are 13 games that can be considered as a matchup between the giants. Due to the rules of drawing lots, this number will only fluctuate slightly in the future. In the group stage last season, there were indeed very few matches between the giants, only 6 games, but that was just an accident. Looking at the four seasons, the strong dialogues in the group stage reached 12, 14, 8 and 10 respectively. And don’t forget that in the past, there were 96 group matches in 6 rounds, but now there are 144 games in 8 rounds. Compared with many seasons, the concentration of strong dialogues this year has been reduced.

Some people say that this year is ultimately 13 different strong conversations, rather than duplicate double cycle repetitions. But as mentioned earlier, many of the strong dialogues in previous years really concern life and death. This year, it is a bit important to play Manchester City in the second round to pretend, and the rest of the show is more of an irrelevant nature. If it is a serious game, Real Madrid's team will watch AC Milan score a goal started from Meinion, to Jafar, Abraham, Reindez and Leon, and finally ended by Reindez?

Don't misunderstand, this is not to say that a strong team has suffered a large number of casualties and weak teams are going further and further away. The weak team must always be upset and should not be overwhelmed. The purpose of a good competition system is to truly roll up between the rich, while ensuring the luxury of the next stage of the competition. So, if the league stage aims to determine the top 8, the top 4 are directly passed, the 5-12 play-offs, and the 13-20 Europa League (the mechanism for relegation to the Europa League is to ensure the competitiveness of the league and avoid a large number of teams being completely undesirable in the last two rounds, and it also helps to improve the competitive level of the Europa League knockout stage), what kind of excitement will it be?

However, how could they agree to let UEFA sacrifice the rich revenue of the quarter-finals? In order to make money, just pour in water, and make the previous 96 games to determine the progress of the top 16, stretching to 144 games + 16 games. Even if this is wasted, the Swiss-made game system, which should be very excellent, turns a set of hot waist flowers into boiled waist flowers.